Today, people are regularly exposed to large amounts of data and often seek to manipulate such data in a number of ways. Computing environments provide the ability for users to analyze such large amounts of data. In some cases, data is manipulated graphically through a visually interactive user display.
Data may be imported, for example, into a spreadsheet where a user is able to process expressions of data according to a variety of functions. For instance, cells in a spreadsheet can contain expressions in the form of items of data and/or functions that may be employed as operations on data. An expression can refer to other cells in a spreadsheet as inputs to the expression, such that a value computed for a first cell may depend on values contained within other cells. In such cases, the result of an evaluation of an expression in the form of a function can be visible in the same cell as the expression. For example, if a cell contains an equation that uses values contained in other cells to make a calculation, the original cell may output the result of the calculation in place of the equation itself. Expressions of data can also be visualized through a chart or graph created through the spreadsheet program. Alternatively, expressions of data can be accessed through the spreadsheet via a software program.